by Maman Aya (USA) | Jun 14, 2013 | 2013, Being Thankful, Cancer, Childhood, Exercise, Health, Kids, Motherhood, Older Children, Running, Social Good, USA, World Motherhood, Younger Children
In early April I decided to step way outside my comfort zone and do something that I never thought I would do. I decided to run a race! I told you about my decision to run this 10K when I first wrote about it. It turned out to be a harder goal than I thought! Every Saturday morning, the Moms In Training team met in various parks around the city.
My group met in Madison Square Park with an amazing trainer, Meri of Mommy and Me Fitness, who had an hour-long workout prepared for us. We walked, jogged, ran circles in the park. We did squats, lunges, planks, jumping jacks, push-ups and other concoctions that she would throw at us. We worked hard, and had fun while doing it!
Lindsey, a fellow Mom In Training, described the way I felt very well when she wrote about her experience with Moms In Training, “Somehow I left my comfort zone behind and decided to join. With the help of a wonderful trainer, Meri, and the support of the other moms, I trained for the 10K. On the day of the 10K, I was joined by another mom who stuck with me through the entire race and definitely kept me running WAY longer than I thought I would or could.” (more…)
Maman Aya is a full-time working mother of 2 beautiful children, a son who is 6 and a daughter who is two. She is raising her children in the high-pressure city of New York within a bilingual and multi-religious home.
Aya was born in Canada to a French mother who then swiftly whisked her away to NYC, where she grew up and spent most of her life. She was raised following Jewish traditions and married an Irish Catholic American who doesn’t speak any other language (which did not go over too well with her mother), but who is learning French through his children. Aya enjoys her job but feels “mommy guilt” while at work. She is lucky to have the flexibility to work from home on Thursdays and recently decided to change her schedule to have “mommy Fridays”, but still feels torn about her time away from her babies. Maman Aya is not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but has been drawn in by the mothers who write for World Moms Blog. She looks forward to joining the team and trying her hand at writing!
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by Carol (Canada) | Jun 7, 2013 | Babies, Canada, Communication, Culture, Family, Health, Infertility, Kids, Loss of Child, Maternal Health, Miscarriage, Motherhood, Pregnancy, Relationships, Womanhood, Working Mother, World Motherhood, Younger Children
Recently, when I was around 10 weeks pregnant, I went in for a dating ultrasound.
My midwife wanted to confirm my baby’s due date, because we suspected that I was actually 9 weeks along, or maybe 11 weeks.
The radiologist discovered that my baby was dead – had died at 8 weeks and 4 days… whenever that had been.
We all know that miscarriage is always a risk, but it’s still a shock to go in for a routine ultrasound with a seemingly healthy pregnancy… and then leave in tears talking about getting a D&C.
A week later I was sedated and the remains of my baby were scooped out of me.
I was heartbroken. I was grieving.
But I was also very lucky: I had immense amounts of support.
I had friends texting me constantly asking what they could do to help. My house smelled like roses, because the girls at work sent me a big bouquet of flowers. My neighbours invited our son over for dinner so we wouldn’t have to fake cheerfulness with him, and left cookies in our mailbox.
The love and support I received contrasted violently with the experience of a friend, who was fired from work after her miscarriage, who got no flowers, no cookies, and whose grandmother and mother-in-law both hurt her frequently by nagging her to produce a baby.
But it’s not a fair comparison – you see, I told people about my miscarriage.
My friend did not.
The conventional wisdom – in our part of the world at least – says that you shouldn’t even tell people that you are pregnant, lest you miscarry. Better to wait until the second trimester, when your risk of miscarriage drops dramatically.
The implied assumption is that you don’t want to tell people about your miscarriage, so it’s better keep your pregnancy a secret until that danger has passed.
I want to know: Why don’t we want to talk about miscarriage?
For many women, miscarriage isn’t just a matter of, “Oops, never mind, no baby after all!” While some may feel that way, and that’s fine, others can be devastated.
I wasn’t just mourning the 8 week jellybean inside me. I was weeping for the baby I had been expecting, my Christmas baby, and as I wept, I clutched the little newborn sized Christmas pajamas that I had already bought.
And sometimes these women suffer side by side.
I had two friends who miscarried close to each other. Both told me, neither told the other. They each thought they were alone. Neither knew what the other was going through. Neither knew that they had something in common.
When I announced my loss at work, every woman over 35 had a miscarriage story to share.
Just think – of the ten women at my work, four have had miscarriages. And none of them talked about it… until I announced mine.
They shared their grief with me, and we hugged each other, and listened to each other’s stories.
And I wondered… why aren’t we supposed to do this?
Why do so many women keep miscarriage a secret, often not even telling friends or family members? Why do some women keep their pregnancies a dark secret, just out of fear that the pregnancy might end?
There’s an element of shame that hovers around miscarriage.
People think that talking about their miscarriage somehow addresses a failure, as if they had made a mistake.
It’s natural to blame yourself for your miscarriage. My first thought was, “What did I do wrong?”
The first thing my midwife said to me was, “You did nothing wrong.”
When I spoke to the nurse at the Early Pregnancy Assessment Centre, she told me that 97% of the time, miscarriages are caused by chromosomal abnormalities and have nothing to do with the mother’s actions.
When I went on to worry that something I was exposed to at work might have killed my baby – x-rays, or pesticides – she told me, “We see a LOT of women in here who are pregnant, but don’t want to be. You wouldn’t believe the crazy stuff they have tried to end the pregnancy at home. It never works. Trust me – there is nothing you could have done to bring this on yourself.”
My miscarriage was not my fault.
I didn’t fail, and the women who have told me about their miscarriages didn’t fail either. So why do we treat it like a failure?
But even the term “miscarriage” implies some fault on the woman, as if I had dropped the baby in a moment of thoughtlessness. In fact, some women have even been prosecuted for their miscarriages.
So we don’t tell people about it.
In a culture where you aren’t supposed to talk about your miscarriage – or even your first trimester pregnancy lest it end in miscarriage – families grieve for their lost babies in a vacuum of shame and secrecy.
There is no funeral. No compassionate leave. No Hallmark cards. But that doesn’t make it less real of a loss.
Even women who aren’t grieving their miscarriage – perhaps they didn’t even want the baby – feel the need to hide it due to the stigma around it.
And that’s never going to change unless people start talking.
Until we bring miscarriage into the light, it will remain a dark, hidden secret.
Until people start talking about it, people won’t know how to respond to it appropriately. Until we remove the stigma, the shame will continue.
Until we talk about it, people will continue to suffer in silence.
Because if you don’t tell anyone unless they have had a miscarriage too, how does anyone who has miscarried find each other?
It just takes one person to speak out, to announce their loss like it is any other loss, and the stories and support come pouring in.
So we need to speak up.
We need to tell people when we suffer a loss. We owe them that, and we owe ourselves that, because for all we know, they need someone to talk to, too. Don’t assume that they don’t know what you’re going through, because chances are, they do.
I’m asking all of you to be brave.
Talk about it on Facebook.
Tweet it, #talkaboutmiscarriage.
Tell people you don’t know very well.
Tell them if you’re grieving. Tell them if you aren’t.
There’s no reason to hide what has happened, or how you feel about it. Chances are neither the experience, nor your emotions, are unique to you.
Only by opening those doors can we find the support we need, and join together the women who have been suffering in silence for all this time.
Have you or has someone close to you had a miscarriage? How did cultural attitudes toward it affect the grieving process?
This is an original post for World Moms Blog by Carol. She can be found blogging at If By Yes and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets.
Photo credit to Jiri Hordan. This photo has been released into the public domain by its author, Jiri Hordan.
Carol from If By Yes has lived in four different Canadian provinces as well as the Caribbean. Now she lives in Vancouver, working a full time job at a vet clinic, training dogs on the side, and raising her son and daughter to be good citizens of the world.
Carol is known for wearing inside-out underwear, microwaving yoghurt, killing house plants, over-thinking the mundane, and pointing out grammatical errors in "Twilight". When not trying to wrestle her son down for a nap, Carol loves to read and write.
Carol can also be found on her blog, If By Yes, and on Twitter @IfByYesTweets
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by Karyn Wills | Jun 3, 2013 | Babies, Being Thankful, Health, Kids, Life Balance, Maternal Health, Motherhood, New Zealand, Nutrition, Parent Care, Pregnancy, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I had my third baby when I was 41. Many people told me I was bonkers and a few refused to congratulate me, but those who knew how it felt to long for a baby, whether that baby was number one or number six, were as delighted as I was.
I was unfit, I knew that once the baby came I would feel tired, and I knew that I would have no time to myself. We already had one son who felt secure with strong boundaries and a gazillion hugs a day, and another who felt truly secure only while he was attached to my body. I knew that I would have to take each day, each hour, perhaps each minute as it came.
This was my self-imposed Everest: to give completely of myself until all the boys chose to pull away from me or manage my small nudges out of the nest, in order that they properly develop their wings. I figured things would begin to get somewhat easier at around the 18 month to two year mark. A friend, who had also had a third baby in her 40s, said it would take four years. I didn’t believe her.
I hadn’t counted on a 24 hour labour followed by a massive bleed on the operating table during an emergency C-Section. I hadn’t planned on premenopausal bodily hiccups. I never imagined I’d feel like I was churning through porridge day after day, after day, after day. But that’s what I got.
Just before Christmas last year I could stand it no longer. I was barely functioning, and I truly felt like this level of energy was my lot. I had three energetic and wonderful boys who needed a Mum with some oomph and pizzazz. I did a breathing rate test off the internet, and my results were worse than a heavy smoker and the same as someone in heart-failure. I went to the doctor.
It was then that I discovered that my iron and haemoglobin levels were extremely low – I joke that I was three quarters dead. Thankfully, my vitamin B levels were fine, my thyroid was doing its happy dance, and I passed the depression test. I got my iron levels sorted and began to feel a bit better.
Still, I wasn’t feeling great and I did wonder, again, if this amount of energy was my lot.
I tweaked my diet. I began rising earlier and going to bed at the same time as the boys. Our baby turned three and a half, and then three and three quarters.
And now, finally, after close to four years, I am almost back to myself. I cannot possibly regret having a gorgeous and much loved child in my 40s. I cannot possibly regret any of the time or energy I have put into any of my beautiful boys. But I can tell you this in complete confidence:
I am damned pleased to be on this side of the mountain!
How did life events affect how you coped with parenting your babies and toddlers?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog from our contributor in New Zealand, Karyn.
The image used in this post is credited to Lindsey Turner. It holds a Flickr Creative Commons attribution license.
Karyn is a teacher, writer and solo mother to three sons. She lives in the sunny wine region of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand in the city of Napier.
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by Ruth | May 30, 2013 | Kids, Motherhood, Parenting, Ruth Wong, World Moms Blog
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my childhood, and as far as I can remember, it had been rather boring.
My parents were poor so we never went on any family holidays abroad. But that’s no excuse for not having some fun family activities. Yet, when I try recalling what we did as a family, my mind is often a blank. We did visit some places of interests but these were more treats than a regular feature. I suppose one of the reasons was that we were financially challenged and outings do cost money. The other reason, I thought, was that my dad’s job had been tough and the weekend was a time to catch some rest.
But we did have fun in small little ways.
I always remember how my dad would catch dragonflies (and another kind of insect which I never found out its name) for me and tie a thin little string on their tails and I would fly them as if they were kites (but we never killed them – we would always return them to nature). Or my dad would bring me to this theme park at night where I loved trying on clip earrings at one of the stalls. I was just a little girl then – probably not even in kindergarten yet!
But somehow, mom seemed often missing in the picture – I couldn’t remember why. She must have stayed home to catch up with house chores which she couldn’t do while looking after me during the day.
Now that I am a mother, I want to be different. (more…)
Ruth lives in Singapore, a tiny island 137 kilometres north of the equator. After graduating from university, she worked as a medical social worker for a few years before making a switch to HR and worked in various industries such as retail, banking and manufacturing. In spite of the invaluable skills and experiences she had gained during those years, she never felt truly happy or satisfied. It was only when she embarked on a journey to rediscover her strengths and passion that this part of her life was transformed. Today, Ruth is living her dreams as a writer. Ironically, she loves what she does so much that at one point, she even thought that becoming a mom would hinder her career. Thanks to her husband’s gentle persuasions, she now realises what joy she would have missed out had she not changed her mind. She is now a happy WAHM. Ruth launched MomME Circle, a resource site to support and inspire moms to create a life and business they love. She has a personal blog Mommy Café where she writes about her son's growing up and shares her interests such as food and photography.
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by Salma (Canada) | May 24, 2013 | Bilingual, Canada, Communication, Culture, Education, Family, Kids, Language, Motherhood, Multicultural, Parenting, Salma, World Motherhood, Younger Children
I am trying to teach my youngest child three languages. I am determined to make it work, even if I only speak one perfectly. I am making a conscious decision to do something that is almost as awful as pulling teeth (in my opinion). I am determined to force myself to come out of my comfort zone, even if it means being laughed at; yes, it happens sometimes. My attempts to teach my young child English, Arabic and French were inevitably a disaster waiting to happen, except that it happened right away. It is a deliberate act of madness on my part, and I hope that my son makes it out alive.
Here’s a little background on my adventures. I have always been a passive bilingual. In my case, I understand spoken French (mostly), I understand written French (greatly), and I can speak some French. The problem is, as the years go by, my linguistic ability coupled with my self-confidence dwindles. And boy is it ever complicated! Along with my love for French, I found it necessary to study and learn Arabic – I married an Arabic speaker. Sure, he speaks English, but my mother-in-law doesn’t speak more than ten words of English.
Learning a new language in your late 20’s is something different. I have always respected immigrants who move to new countries and learn the language (through no choice of their own of course), but now I respect them ten-fold. (more…)
An Imperfect Stepford Wife is what Salma describes herself as because she simply cannot get it right. She loves decorating, travelling, parenting,learning, writing, reading and cooking, She also delights in all things mischievous, simply because it drives her hubby crazy.
Salma has 2 daughters and a baby boy. The death of her first son in 2009 was very difficult, however, after the birth of her Rainbow baby in 2010 (one day after her birthday) she has made a commitment to laugh more and channel the innocence of youth through her children. She has blogged about her loss, her pregnancy with Rainbow, and Islamic life.
After relocating to Alberta with her husband in 2011 she has found new challenges and rewards- like buying their first house, and finding a rewarding career.
Her roots are tied to Jamaica, while her hubby is from Yemen. Their routes, however, have led them to Egypt and Canada, which is most interesting because their lives are filled with cultural and language barriers. Even though she earned a degree in Criminology, Salma's true passion is Social Work. She truly appreciates the beauty of the human race. She writes critical essays on topics such as feminism and the law, cultural relativity and the role of women in Islam and "the veil".
Salma works full-time, however, she believes that unless the imagination of a child is nourished, it will go to waste. She follows the philosophy of un-schooling and always finds time to teach and explore with her children. From this stance, she pushes her children to be passionate about every aspect of life, and to strive to be life-long learners and teachers. You can read about her at Chasing Rainbow.
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I was watching my daughter play with a bubble machine today. She and I were laughing as she was running through the bubbles, and we were both looking at the bubbles floating up to the sky trying to see different images. I looked over at her as she watched the bubbles drift away and she had the biggest, sweetest smile on her face. I wondered in my mind if she would remember this extra special ordinary day because I knew I was making an imprint of it in my own mind…these special moments with just the two of us in the middle of the day in the middle of a week are starting to slip through my fingers… 
